Saturday, May 13, 2017

The state Department of Housing said Friday it was aware of the link
between the developer of Ponemah Mill in Taftville and a man who has
pleaded guilty in an organized crime case involving union corruption
when it awarded the firm with taxpayer dollars to help finance the
project.
Onekey LLC Director of Operations Finbar O’Neill,
husband of Onekey and Ponemah Riverbank LLC owner Paula O’Neill, pleaded
guilty to New York state charges 13 years ago, and federal charges
seven years ago, connected to a carpenters union corruption case. The
Bulletin first reported the federal pleas, on counts of making unlawful
payments to labor representatives and conspiracy to make such payments,
in September 2009.

Finbar O’Neill, as an officer of Terra Firma Construction Management
and General Contracting LLC, was one of 38 people indicted in 2000 as
members of a criminal enterprise dubbed the Lucchese Construction Group,
which engaged in labor bribery, bid rigging and “other anticompetitive
schemes that systematically siphoned millions of dollars from both
public and private construction projects” between 1997 and 1999,
according to the New York indictment.
Groundbreaking for phase
one of the Lofts at Ponemah Mills, the planned $30 million housing
complex of 116 units at the massive former textile mill site along the
Shetucket River, took place last May and is scheduled to continue
through October. Phase two of the project will create 121 new units of
mixed-income family housing.
In March 2015, state leaders
announced a $14 million financing package for Ponemah Riverbank. That
deal included an allotment of $6.1 million from Competitive Housing
Assistance for Multifamily Properties, a program of the housing
department, as well as $8.25 million from the Connecticut Housing
Finance Authority in the form of tax-exempt bonds.
“Ponemah
Riverbank LLC submitted an application in response to a competitive
request for proposal,” state Department of Housing spokesman Dan
Arsenault said. “Paula O’Neill is the managing member and sole owner of
this company and, as such, she was the applicant for these funds.”
Arsenault said Paula O’Neill’s proposal was ranked among the highest of all the applications reviewed by the department.
“Details
of her husband’s background were known during the approval process,” he
said. “To be clear, Finbar O’Neill was neither the applicant, nor is he
an owner, of Ponemah Riverbank LLC.”
The department has in place
procedures to prevent fraud, waste and abuse of state funds, Arsenault
said. These include regular written reports and on-site inspections.
Requests for disbursement of funds include all relevant invoices,
progress certifications and appropriate lien waivers.
Arsenault said during the application process, housing department
officials had a “frank discussion” of Finbar O’Neill’s past convictions.
The legal troubles were also known by Norwich officials several
years ago, former mayor and City Council President Pro Tempore Peter
Nystrom said.
“I was aware of his problems back then,” he said.
“That was something that was around even before I was mayor. But it was
known and there didn’t seem to be a lot of concern. The state has all
those checks and balances in place.”
Records show Finbar O’Neill
helped deliver illegal cash payments to Michael Forde, the then head of
the 25,000-member Carpenters Union District Council in New York City,
according to information from the FBI. In return for the money, certain
contractors would be able to pay union members below-union rates without
benefits, and hire illegal immigrants and nonunion workers.
Contractors,
who were required to use union labor and pay prevailing wages, instead
used nonunion labor and did not pay prevailing wages. However, they
billed the public agencies and private developers as if they had
complied with the law.
The difference between what was billed and
the contractor’s actual labor cost financed bribes to allow the use of
nonunion labor and payments to organized crime officials of a “mob tax”
of at least 5 percent of the contract’s value. In addition to the “mob
tax” imposed on them, the contractors were also required to employ made
members of the Lucchese crime family as “no show” or “no work”
employees, according to the indictment.
O’Neill pleaded guilty
to state charges of falsifying business records in 2004. He was placed
on probation and government monitoring for five years and fined $50,000.